How I Came to Life
I like when Mom tells this story because it makes me laugh so much. It’s not
funny in the way a joke is funny, but when Mom tells it, Via and I just start
cracking up.
So when I was in my mom’s stomach, no one had any idea I would come
out looking the way I look. Mom had had Via four years before, and that had
been such a “walk in the park” (Mom’s expression) that there was no reason
to run any special tests. About two months before I was born, the doctors
realized there was something wrong with my face, but they didn’t think it
was going to be bad. They told Mom and Dad I had a cleft palate and some
other stuff going on. They called it “small anomalies.”
There were two nurses in the delivery room the night I was born. One was
very nice and sweet. The other one, Mom said, did not seem at all nice or
sweet. She had very big arms and (here comes the funny part), she kept
farting. Like, she’d bring Mom some ice chips, and then fart. She’d check
Mom’s blood pressure, and fart. Mom says it was unbelievable because the
nurse never even said excuse me! Meanwhile, Mom’s regular doctor wasn’t
on duty that night, so Mom got stuck with this cranky kid doctor she and Dad
nicknamed Doogie after some old TV show or something (they didn’t
actually call him that to his face). But Mom says that even though everyone
in the room was kind of grumpy, Dad kept making her laugh all night long.
When I came out of Mom’s stomach, she said the whole room got very
quiet. Mom didn’t even get a chance to look at me because the nice nurse
immediately rushed me out of the room. Dad was in such a hurry to follow
her that he dropped the video camera, which broke into a million pieces. And
then Mom got very upset and tried to get out of bed to see where they were
going, but the farting nurse put her very big arms on Mom to keep her down
in the bed. They were practically fighting, because Mom was hysterical and
the farting nurse was yelling at her to stay calm, and then they both started
screaming for the doctor. But guess what? He had fainted! Right on the floor!
So when the farting nurse saw that he had fainted, she started pushing him
